Introduction

created the Kandinsky 3 images with dbCinema, a graphic synthesizer I'm writing. In dbCinema, you create and configure one or more simultaneous 'brushes'. And assign each brush a concept, in the form either of a search string or a local directory of images. If the concept is a search string, dbCinema downloads images from the net somehow related to the concept (via a Google and Yahoo image search) and uses those images as 'paint' sort of like a music synthesizer uses samples of other music in the creation of new work. The samples can be as big or small as you like, and many other properties are also configurable. A musican typically plays several 'notes' or samples per second; dbCinema typically renders several 'strokes' per second. A music synthesizer can use samples from many instruments at once; dbCinema lets you use many images at once in a compositional activity that produces a painterly movie and screenshots of the movie.

The concept for the brushes in Kandinsky 3 was a search string: "Kandinsky". The Kandinsky 3 images use some of the paintings of Wassily Kandinsky [1], amazing Russian abstract painter of the early twentieth century, as what the dbCinema brushes use as 'paint'. As well as other images somehow associated with "Kandinsky" via a Google+Yahoo image search.

The shapes of the brushes in these images are SWF Flash animations. So the brushes are a bit like stamps. Each frame in a dbCinema 'movie', the brush stamps out a graphic in the shape of the current frame of a SWF Flash animation. But the image inside the shape is part of a Wassily Kandinsky painting. Every few seconds, the brush uses a different Kandinsky painting as 'paint'.

Each brush has two types of motion. The nib is a Flash animation so, of course, it can move, but, also, the animation itself is moved around the screen by dbCinema. Each brush has a configurable geometry, which is the path dbCinema uses to move the animation around the screen.

The situation is sort of like a type of art I made in school in grade three. We made paintings and then covered them with black wax. Then we took a pencil and scratched away parts of the wax to reveal a bit of the underlying painting. But in dbCinema, the underlying (Kandinsky) painting changes every few seconds. And we're not using pencils to scratch away the wax but SWF Flash animations.

Many of the SWF Flash animations used—you can view the animations via links to the left—have shapes related to the shapes in the Kandinsky paintings. Kandinsky paintings have circles, semi-circles, triangles, squares, grids, lines, curved lines, parabolas, and other simple geometric shapes in them. That is mostly the type of shape I used in the SWF Flash animations. I only realized this relation between the shapes of the SWF Flash animations and the shapes Kandinsky often draws when I was making the thumbnail images on the index page. Well duh.

Kandinsky's paintings are, in part, about painting. Of course, all paintings are, to some extent, about painting. Just like all poems are, to some extent, about poetry. Kandinsky puts paintings of paintbrushes in there sometimes. And other art tools. And the simple geometric shapes he draws/paints are also sort of tools of the trade. Basic tools of the trade, basic shapes. Like circles, parabolas, ellipses, grids, simple curved lines, and so on. They also are basic tools in creating visual art with computers, whether the work is abstract or otherwise [2].

To the left are links to the SWF Flash animations I used. Most of these were created specially for this sequence of dbCinema images (the first images I've made with the dbCinema Flash brush), but some of the SWF Flash animations are ones I created earlier for earlier work not related to dbCinema.

One of the things I want to do is increase the stylistic range of which dbCinema is capable. Adding the Flash brush does that quite a bit. Because not only can you use whatever underlying images you like via a Google+Yahoo image search (or use your own images), but the shape of the brush can be whatever you like. The motion of the brush is partly determined by the Flash animation's motion, but also by the geometry of the brush. I am also adding brush geometries as I go along.

As well as other types of brushes. For instance a bitmap brush would be nice. So you could use any bitmap you like as a brush.

Footnotes